Photo by Daniel Friedman.

Sitting on the southern shore of Tempe Town Lake just east of the Tempe Center for the Arts is a tiny structure with no signs or labels. It’s called Das Haus, German for, the house, but it isn’t an actual haus, or house, it’s parts of a house to demonstrate how to save energy with new materials, re-purposed materials and new combinations of materials.

I was there too early  so here were so few signs or explanatory materials there yesterday morning as I rode by on my typical Saturday morning bike ride, I had to go the the Das Haus website to find out precisely what it is.

Das Haus is taking a year-long tour around the US and Canada, stopping in Tempe until Jan. 30. It’s closed Jan. 25 for routine maintenance and repairs. There are various events, tours, self-guided tours and scavenger hunts for kids.

From what I could tell, Das Haus has a wall mounted solar energy system, bamboo floors, energy saving wall systems and designs for interior spaces. There was a projector projecting something on a white wall but it was too light out to tell what it was.

The website says “Das Haus is a traveling pavilion, a North American tour and an ONGOING INTERNATIONAL DIALOGUE (capitalization is theirs) about advanced technologies for home construction and solar energy use.” The sustainable construction and technology to achieve energy savings is German, hence the German name.

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